Gaming News Online Playstation 3

Given the recent difficulties that Sony have been facing, Industry analysts, men and women who often can be regarded as the astrologists of the video game industry, have crawled out of the woodworks again to come up with these latest batch of ‘insights’.

RW Baird analyst, Colin Sebastian, recently commented to Games Industry International that ”Sony is in a tough position. In many areas of their business, they are losing share, such as TVs and computers, and their challenges are well known in gaming. The need to invest in a significant upgrade cycle for Orbis/PS4 comes at a awkward time for Sony, but to remain competitive longer term in games, we think there needs to be another price reduction on the PS3, and then be first to market with a next generation console.”

In other words, as with any issue that the company has faced over the last 10 years, Sebastian’s solution is to make their products cheaper.

Not that I’m complaining, I do agree that the PS3 seems a little overpriced compared to its Xbox 360 counterpart, especially when there is very little discernable difference between the two in terms of visual quality or output of high quality games, but it does seem to be the offered solution by any ‘analyst’ and any given time. I just wish for once someone would come out and admit that Sony don’t need a price cut, they need to to start praying to this guy.

Yet Sebastian isn’t the only one wading in with his own thoughts. Resident crackpot and loveable rogue Michael Pachter has also come out, claiming that Sony need to strip down their online service, turning it into a deplorable “freemium” model, that constantly encourages users to upgrade.

“I think it’s unlikely that they will require a fee, but think they will strip down the free version to multiplayer and not much else in order to encourage people to pay the fee,” Wedbush Securities’ Michael Pachter told Games industry international.

Hopefully Sony won’t take heed of Pachter’s predictions, the last thing they need to do is to restrict their currently adequate online service in the hopes of enticing payment.